Bouncy balls - http://www.exmsft.com/~hanss/pranks.htm

Chicago - Codename for Windows 95.

RAID - Microsoft's internal bug tracking tool up until ~2002.

Red Hook - A Seattle-area brewery, which appears to have distribution deals across the US now.

And apparently "Sev 2" is a bug severity level, corresponding to one level below "critical/crash".

Correct. Sev 1 is the highest.

When I am feeling sad, it feels to me that it is bugs all the way down. Fixing one only makes that part of the code shine in contrast, still dark compared to the green fields of a new project. When Im happy though its like whack-a-mole, and I sink into the rhythm like it was suddenly crossed with DDR. I go home tired either way.

Successful software projects are all alike; every unsuccessful software project is unsuccessful in its own way. -my boss

As profoundly untrue as Tolstoy's original.

Maybe it can generalize to, "things you've never been part of all seem the same, while things you're personally involved in all seem unique."

You've never been part of a successful project! Wow. Straight out of Hemingway.

With your consent, I'm going to swipe that and post at the coffee machine at work.

Go ahead :)

Oh man, this reminds me of another Hemingway parody I saw 15 or 20 years ago that was hilarious. Alas, no one seems to have ever posted it to the Web, and it's evidently been forgotten.

Here are some snippets of it, quoted from memory as best I can recall. If anyone can come up with the whole thing, I will be eternally grateful.

"That was in [Place??] but now it was [Place??] and a new start but he had bunions and his officemate had the brain of a zither, and in two weeks there was a deadline. Not like the deadlines he had known back home. Those deadlines were hard and sure and swift. These were like melted pudding."

"... At least it wasn't Man Pages."

There was much more, including something about the words on the screen looking like rain. Anyone recognize this???

No idea, but here's my own favorite (John M. Ford, "The Hemstitch Notebooks"):

The furry one came into the cantina. He did not walk as a coyote should, he flowed like brown fuzzy water along the floor to the bar and held up a finger, and though he did not speak the owner poured him a drink and he drank it. It poured over his teeth and around his tongue and down his gullet and past his duodenum and into his flat coyote belly, and then he filled out and stood up straight like a man coyote does, and his eyes had the light of those who have had the very big rock fall on them, or been blown up by the Acme dynamite, or have fallen off the high cliff and hit the telegraph wires and bounced up again. When a man coyote knows these things they do not go away from him. The coyote walked out of the cantina straight with the tire marks down his back like sergeant's stripes.

I hate to make such a pointless comment, but that was pretty awesome.

It's an amazing story and more than a parody - it's also a great example of and tribute to Hemingway's style.

Hemingway has such a style, so short and declarative... so suitable to a coding environment.

Also, Cory Stoll did a great job of bringing Hemingway to life in a recent film, and its hard not to read this in his voice

That is hilarious.

Hernando shrugged. “Prado is finished. He was gored by three Sev 2's on Chicago. All he does now is drink herb tea and play with his screensavers.”

Then I will do it, my friend,” he said formally. “I will do it for Prado, who was once great with the bugs.

I almost pissed my pants. Which scene is this from? With Anselmo? It could have used some "in-the-milk-of..."

I'm pretty sure 60% of this is a direct edit of For whom the bell tolls (which doesn't make it less awesome).

A truly good writer can not only write well, but can mimic the writing of great writers. This guy is a great writer.

Also--that whole thing is hilarious.